The Unlikely Spy(8)
"What was everyone talking about?" Peter asked. "It was damned rude."
"Someone arrived late, and they'd been listening to a bulletin on the car radio," Shepherd said. "The British and French just declared war on Germany."
3
LONDON: MAY 1940
Professor Alfred Vicary vanished without explanation from University College on the third Friday of May 1940. A secretary named Lillian Walford was the last member of the staff to see him before his abrupt departure. In a rare indiscretion, she revealed to the other professors that Vicary's last telephone call had been from the new prime minister. In fact, she had spoken to Mr. Churchill personally.
"Same thing happened to Masterman and Cheney at Oxford," Tom Perrington, an Egyptologist, said as he gazed at the entry in the telephone log. "Mysterious calls, men in dark suits. I suspect our dear friend Alfred has slipped behind the veil." Then he added, sotto voce, "Into the secret Acropolis."
Perrington's languid smile did little to hide his disappointment, Miss Walford would remark later. Too bad Britain wasn't at war with the ancient Egyptians--perhaps Perrington would have been chosen too.
Vicary spent his last hours in the cramped disorderly office overlooking Gordon Square putting the final touches on an article for the Sunday Times. The current crisis might have been avoided, it suggested, if Britain and France had attacked Germany in 1939 while Hitler still was preoccupied with Poland. He knew it would be roundly criticized given the current climate; his last piece had been denounced as "Churchillian warmongering" by a publication of the pro-Nazi extreme right. Vicary secretly hoped his new article would be similarly received.
It was a glorious late-spring day, bright sunshine but deceptively chilly. Vicary, an accomplished if reluctant chess player, appreciated deception. He rose, put on a cardigan sweater, and resumed his work.
The fine weather painted a false picture. Britain was a nation under siege--defenseless, frightened, reeling in utter confusion. Plans were drawn up to evacuate the Royal Family to Canada. The government asked that Britain's other national treasure, its children, be sent into the countryside where they would be safe from the Luftwaffe's bombers.
Through the use of skilled propaganda the government had made the general public extremely aware of the threat posed by spies and Fifth Columnists. It was now reaping the consequences. Constabularies were being buried by reports of strangers, odd-looking fellows, or German-looking gentlemen. Citizens were eavesdropping on conversations in pubs, hearing what they liked, then telling the police. They reported smoke signals, winking shore lights, and parachuting spies. A rumor swept the country that German agents posed as nuns during the invasion of the Low Countries; suddenly, nuns were suspect. Most left the walled sanctuary of their convents only when absolutely necessary.
One million men too young, too old, or too feeble to get into the armed forces rushed to join the Home Guard. There were no extra rifles for the Guard so they armed themselves with whatever they could: shotguns, swords, broom handles, medieval bludgeons, Gurkha knives, even golf clubs. Those who somehow couldn't find a suitable weapon were instructed to carry pepper to toss into the eyes of marauding German soldiers.
Vicary, a noted historian, watched his nation's jittery preparations for war with a mixture of enormous pride and quiet depression. Throughout the thirties his periodic newspaper articles and lectures had warned that Hitler posed a serious threat to England and the rest of the world. But Britain, exhausted from the last war with the Germans, had been in no mood to hear about another. Now the German army was driving across France with the ease of a weekend motor outing. Soon Adolf Hitler would stand atop an empire stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean. And Britain, poorly armed and ill prepared, stood alone against him.
Vicary finished the article, set down his pencil, and read it from the beginning. Outside, the sun was setting into a sea of orange over London. The smell of the crocuses and daffodils in the gardens of Gordon Square drifted in his window. The afternoon had turned colder; the flowers were likely to set off a sneezing fit. But the breeze felt wonderful on his face and somehow made the tea taste better. He left the window open and enjoyed it.
The war--it was making him think and act differently. It was making him look more fondly upon his countrymen, whom he usually viewed with something approaching despair. He marveled at how they made jokes while filing into the shelter of the underground and at the way they sang in pubs to hide their fear. It took Vicary some time to recognize his feelings for what they were: patriotism. During his lifetime of study he had concluded it was the most destructive force on the planet. But now he felt the stirring of patriotism in his own chest and did not feel ashamed. We are good and they are evil. Our nationalism is justified.
Vicary had decided he wanted to contribute. He wanted to do something instead of watching the world through his well-guarded window.
At six o'clock Lillian Walford entered without knocking. She was tall with a shot-putter's legs and round glasses that magnified an unfaltering gaze. She began straightening papers and closing books with the quiet efficiency of a night nurse.
Nominally, Miss Walford was assigned to all the professors in the department. But she believed that God, in his infinite wisdom, entrusted each of us with one soul to look after. And if any poor soul needed looking after, it was Professor Vicary. For ten years she had overseen the details of Vicary's uncomplicated life with military precision. She made certain there was food at his house in Draycott Place in Chelsea. She saw that his shirts were delivered and contained the right amount of starch--not too much or it would irritate the soft skin of his neck. She saw to his bills and lectured him regularly about the state of his poorly managed bank account. She hired new maids with seasonal regularity because his fits of bad temper drove away the old ones. Despite the closeness of their working relationship they never referred to each other by their Christian names. She was Miss Walford and he was Professor Vicary. She preferred to be called a personal assistant and, uncharacteristically, Vicary indulged her.